In encouraging the U.S. to defend the nation of Georgia, why did John McCain insist on labeling Georgia a "Christian Nation"?

cross posted from docuDharma

Enough is enough.  McCain surrogate Joe Lieberman appeared on Tuesday at Pastor John Hagee's Citizens United For Israel (CUFI) conference and made a disgraceful, pandering speech.  You'll recall that Hagee's endorsement of McSame provoked outrage until McCain rejected it.  But, even without all of that, Lieberman's appearance was an utter disgrace worthy of condemnation.

Please join me in DC.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

From tomorrow, Monday, July 21 through Thursday, July 24, Pastor John Hagee will be in Washington, D.C. to lead the national gathering of his infamous Christians United For Israel.  The CUFI conference is studded with rightwing zealots and features workshops like "Radical Islam: In Their Own Words," led by neo-conservative Daniel Pipes and former right-wing Senator Rick Santorum; and "The Basics of The Arab Israeli Conflict," led by representatives of the pro-occupation David Project and StandWithUS and Gary Bauer, president of anti-choice, homophobic American Values.

Unbelievably, the Anti Defamation League (ADL), the supposed bigotry watchdog, has not condemned Hagee for his anti semitic, anti gay, anti Muslim rhetoric.  

Join me in DC.

Early in July, producers of 120+ videos were informed, as reported by Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, that their videos had been removed from the YouTube website for alleged copyright infringement, for containing John Hagee sermon video footage. With the immanent kickoff of Pastor John Hagee's 2008 Christians United For Israel summit, at which Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman is due to deliver a July 22nd capstone speech, the prevailing assumption is that Pastor Hagee and his ministry launched preemptive attacks against YouTube videos critical of his ministry in order to temporarily repress the critical reports during mainstream media coverage of CUFI 2008 expected to ensue in little more than a week. [Digg this story! - 1, 2, 3]

Last week, on July the 1st, I received notice from YouTube that eight of my videos on YouTube's website had been taken down, allegedly for copyright violations. The videos included the notorious "God Sent Hitler" video which caused sufficient scandal, because it got shown widely on American and international TV, to force John McCain to renounce the political endorsement of Pastor John Hagee. JHM Ministries also targeted videos from Max Blumenthal, from People For The American Way and even from a Christian fundamentalist ministry critical of Hagee's "Prosperity Gospel" teaching - maybe videos from other parties too. But overall the hit was very selective.

If the United States gets into a war with Iran the results will almost certainly be disastrous and may be the end of American Democracy.

The evidence I'm outlining below needs the widest possible public distribution - especially to Jewish groups and Jewish leaders both within the US and in Israel. US Senator Joseph Lieberman has likened Pastor John Hagee to Moses but Moses did not, to my knowledge mass-market anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and so Lieberman's comparison is off the mark. To put it mildly.

Pastor John Hagee and his "Christians United For Israel" group claim to support Israel and Jews but Hagee and leaders of his group have been, for decades now, mass-marketing anti-Jewish propaganda - and leaders of Hagee's group are on public record stating their expectation of a coming future "Holocaust" they expect to engulf Jews.

Why have I chosen to write, with such intensity over the last two years, about Pastor John Hagee and his developing political machine, CUFI ? Why should you care ? - see the second blockquote box of this post for a quick summary of why John Hagee matters.  

Below is the explanation for that which I put on my application for a DFA/Netroots Nation scholarship and I'm writing this to ask for your help in promoting a story I've just put up on the Huffington Post, which concerns the push to politically rehabilitate John Hagee.

If you want to cut to the chase, your vote for my Huffington Post story on Digg would be very welcome. Best, Bruce Wilson

The ADL just accepted, last Friday, a so-called "apology" from Pastor Hagee but Hagee's apology letter to the ADL cited a 1999 sermon as the source of the "God sent Hitler" controversy and that's flatly wrong:

[below: the video in question, with Pastor John Hagee's "god sent Hitler" /"Jews aren't spiritually alive" statements, from a sermon Hagee gave in late 2005]

Late last week, John McCain's former political endorser, likened by Senator Joseph Lieberman to Moses, Pastor John Hagee "apologized" to the Jewish Anti Defamation League [apology accepted] by claiming that the source of the controversy at hand was a 1999 sermon and issuing his regrets at hurt feelings the sermon may have caused but that's deceptive in the extreme.

Which "Lieberman Pal" am I talking about ? Well John Hagee of course.
If you want to help discourage US Senator Joseph Lieberman from supporting an endorsing a group that has worked to incite acts of terrorism against the State of Israel, please sign this J-Street petition asking Lieberman

Here's J-Street's excellent new video, which uses the audio clip from Hagee that I featured in my breakout viral video seen by tens or hundreds of millions worldwide:

On Monday, AmeriGus posted a laundry list of Rep. Eliot Engel's (D-NY) not so progressive stances on the blog Left of the Hudson:

He reminded us of Engel's snubbing of Net Neutrality, his role in creating corporate media monopolies, his saber rattling against Iraq, his stance against impeachment, and his cheerleading for a Columbian Free Trade Agreement. Even worse, Engel wants to write Dubya a blank check to invade Iran, even going so far as to chastise Nancy Pelosi for trying to insert language in a House appropriations package to keep Dubya from using funds for our current wars to subsidize military action against Iran.

But what's unforgivable is Engel's past and continuing support of Rev. John Hagee's minions, people who want to attack Iran because it plays to their cultish, fatalistic, Armageddon/end-of-the-world scenario.

We're going to take Rep. Engel behind the woodshed below the fold.

ACTION ITEM coming. (plus links, asap)

Please return periodically, every 15 minutes, if you are interested in helping to pressure US Senator Joseph Lieberman to distance himself from CUFI, an organization that appears to incite terrorist attacks against the national security interests of the State of Israel, acts that are widely believed would trigger a Mideast regional war or even a World War. I am conferring with some relevant Jewish organizations on an appropriate course of action to publicly censure Senator Lieberman for his association with CUFI and John Hagee, who has publicly blamed Jews for the Holocaust and stated that God sent Hitler.

United States Senator Joseph Lieberman has called for banning "terrorist videos" from YouTube but Mr. Lieberman has failed to recognize that he has closely associated and allied himself with a group that has repeatedly and very publicly incited acts, against Israel, which the state of Israel considers acts of terrorism posing a security threat of the highest magnitude.

Note: Sorry if any of this has been posted before. It was all news to me.

In Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi's hilarious and valuable new book, "The Great Derangement," he (among other things) goes undercover as a member of John Hagee's Cornerstone Church. He joins Bible study groups (creepily, known as "cells"), speaks in tongues, and goes on a bizarre "retreat" where the Culminating Moment is vomiting up your demons.

He also goes on at some length about Hagee himself and the mission of Christian Zionism. And then he says something that detonates McCain's assertions of "I didn't know the guy blah blah blah", right in the middle of a passage about Hagee's various political connections.

The details, after the jump:

Take a look into John Hagee’s organization, Christians United for Israel, as it held its bizzare annual Washington-Israel Summit on July 16, 2007.  Reporter Max Blumenthal speaks with Zionist extremists John Hagee, Joe Lieberman, Tom DeLay, Ambassador Dore Gold and other war-mongering, Doomsday-worshiping "Christian" Zionist extremists.

Barack Obama in no uncertain terms Tuesday made a clear break with his incendiary former minister, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  But despite Obama's disavowal of his one-time pastor's outrageous statements, the media spotlight continues to shine on Wright.  Meanwhile, John McCain has maintained his silence on the dangerous vision of Armageddon and Iran held by his own pastoral supporter, John Hagee.

In New Orleans as part of his so-called "Forgotten Places" tour, former Navy airman John McCain found himself evading incoming flak over the most recent comments of Pastor John Hagee.  Coming just days after George Stephanolous lobbed him a Hagee softball, McCain faced questions over Hagee's assertions that "God's hand" was behind Hurricane Katrina because New Orleans was a "sinful city."  But still absent from the media discussion about John McCain and his supporter the End-Times Pastor Hagee is the question of conflict with Iran.  Given his own tough talk toward Tehran, does John McCain agree with Pastor John Hagee that war with Iran is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy?

FIRST, just hit the button.

The following video is 5 minutes long. It does important, immediate political work I can assure you.

San Antonio Megachurch leader, Pastor John Hagee, formed Christians United For Israel (CUFI) in early 2006, as a political lobbying bloc to 'support Israel'. In practice, CUFI generally supports the far-right politics of the Israeli Likud Party and categorically rejects any Israeli-Palestinian peace deals which would feature Israeli land concessions.

CUFI is working to develop a capacity to mobilize, on short notice, the political energies of millions, potentially up to 10 million or more, of American evangelicals.  

Few developments provide greater schadenfreude for liberals than division and conflict among the ranks of the American Taliban.  So watching the Catholic League's Bill Donahue burst a blood vessel over John McCain's embrace of the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee is must-see entertainment for Democrats.  But as I first wrote almost two years ago, when it comes to his End Times vision of conflict with Iran, John Hagee is no laughing matter.

[UPDATE: George Bush just warned that WW3 might begin over Iraq's alleged attempt to get nuclear weapons, an effort that the IAEA says is a trumped up charge in the first place, and the IAEA has credibility; the agency's assessment of Iraq's nuclear program prior to the US invasion of that country (moribund) was born out. Last September 21, I posted here about an allegation that Bush cited "Gog and Magog" to Jacques Chirac as a reason for the invasion of Iraq. As I mention in my post, Senator John McCain stated, in April of 2006 on "Meet The Press", that a US attack on Iran could trigger "Armageddon".]